Student lefties across London have found their passions newly inflamed by a new spate of occupations in univer- sity spaces. Earlier this month, a group of women and non-binary activists as- sociated with the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts seized a series of rooms in Senate House, the University of London’s administrative building, on the weekend of International Women’s Day. UoL decided to respect the occu- pation as a peaceful protest, a stark con- trast to their reaction to the last major occupation, in 2013 (see CG41), when the police swiftly turfed out the protest- ers.
In the last week, occupations have sprung up at LSE, and at the University of the Arts London, in their Central St. Martin’s campus. The Occupy LSE group has used their newly gained space to create ‘The Free University of Lon- don’, which their manifesto describes as the “building of a new directly demo- cratic, non-hierarchical and universally accessible education”. The Cheese Grater asked David Dahlborn, man about town, why LSE hadn’t yet taken action to try and evict the protesters, and he conjectured that “reputation is hard cur- rency for these institutions, and at LSE management is particularly afraid of get- ting a bad name in the press around ap- plication times.”
The Occupy UAL protest was called in response to the news that UAL would be slashing its foundation courses. Also protested against are proposed staff redundancies, and a £500k cut to the Widening Participation programme, which encourages students from disad- vantaged communities to get involved with an arts education. Dahlborn, who has been ensconced at the UAL Occupa- tion, suggested that university manage- ments have brought this on themselves, saying that if they “hadn’t been so evil and if we’d had democratic universities where nobody is exploited or oppressed, then we wouldn’t have to run occupa- tions.” On the topic of where the new- found fervour of occupations would lead, Dahlborn pronounced that “where there are grievances and injustices and people who are prepared to stand up for fairness and democracy, there will be oc- cupations. There are plenty of both in London at the moment.”